An­na-Lisa Paul

Se­nior Re­porter

an­na-lisa.paul@guardian.co.tt

Rel­a­tives of the man who drowned at Ba­lan­dra Beach on Sat­ur­day dur­ing a fam­i­ly out­ing, are ap­peal­ing for a life­guard to be as­signed to the pop­u­lar beach as they be­lieve this can help pre­vent an­oth­er tragedy.

Some rel­a­tives held back tears out­side the Foren­sic Sci­ence Cen­tre, St James, yes­ter­day, while oth­ers wept open­ly for Ithiel Ar­naud who was de­scribed as one of the “jol­liest” peo­ple around.

The 27-year-old of Or­chid Gar­dens, Pleas­antville, ar­rived at Ba­lan­dra Beach, To­co Main Road, around 3 pm.

Rel­a­tives said short­ly af­ter 3 pm, Ar­naud went in­to the wa­ter but be­gan to ex­pe­ri­ence dif­fi­cul­ty short­ly af­ter.

Beach­go­ers pulled him to the shore.

Al­though at­tempts were made to re­sus­ci­tate him, rel­a­tives said all ef­forts proved fu­tile.

They be­lieve, how­ev­er, that if a life­guard had been on du­ty at Ba­lan­dra Beach Ar­naud would still be alive.

“Maybe if it had one life­guard there, maybe it would have some­body who could have ad­min­is­tered CPR or knew First Aid, rather than the peo­ple who were just lim­ing there and didn’t know any­thing at all,” said a rel­a­tive.

An­oth­er said, “To top it off, the am­bu­lance took a long time to come. It took over three hours for them to reach us.”

Ar­naud’s broth­er Yahshuan Ali de­scribed him as, “Fun, jol­ly, al­ways spread­ing joy.”

He said the 27 year old al­ways had a keen in­ter­est in help­ing oth­ers and while he was chat­ty, “he was a re­al calm guy.”

He said the com­mu­ni­ty where Ar­naud lived was shocked and sad­dened by the loss.

“He was al­ways spread­ing the love wher­ev­er he could. He now start sell­ing drinks and snacks, he was try­ing some­thing,” Ali said.

Life­guard: No in­fra­struc­ture

at Ba­lan­dra Beach

Wa­ter Safe­ty Ed­u­ca­tion Of­fi­cer from the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty’s Life­guard Ser­vices Al­lis­ter Liv­ingston ex­tend­ed con­do­lences to the griev­ing fam­i­ly as he said the in­ci­dent was both sad and un­for­tu­nate.

He said, “There are no life­guards at that beach be­cause there is no in­fra­struc­ture in place.”

Liv­ingston said mem­bers of the pub­lic who vis­it beach­es where there are no life­guards as­signed, were do­ing so at their own risk.

Beach­es where life­guards are cur­rent­ly as­signed in­clude Mara­cas, Las Cuevas, Man­zanil­la, Ma­yaro, To­co, Saly­bia, Saline’s Bay, Ves­signy, Los Iros, and Quinam.